The comments came in response to an article in The Wall Street Journal citing internal documents that showed IBM expects to save $168 million annually starting in 2006 by shifting several thousand high-paying programming jobs overseas.

The spokesman refused to confirm the existence of the documents cited in the story or the differences in wage rates that were quoted.

The documents said IBM was looking at shifting jobs to China, India and Brazil, where wages for skilled programmers are substantially lower than in the United States.